Discoveries from Taiwan World Cinema

Crime / drama movie

A man tracks dowm his missing father, looking for the ancient memory of a last dish.

Scriptwriter Ah-X takes good care of his plant, Xiaojie. While Ah-X is writing, Xiaojie is the only one accompanying him. While Xiaojie grows bigger, Ah-X also starts to change little by little. Until one night, everything is losing control. Implantation is a short film which skillfully combines stop-motion animation and 4:3 film format.

Ching, a passionate student, and Hsiang, a solitary artist, meet by chance along Taiwan\' coastal highway. Hsiang takes Ching to visit her friend, Ji, who lives on a farm with her husband. Inspired by Hsiang\'s calm strength and the beauty of the landscape, Ching begins to find peace, and Hsiang hesitantly begins to acknowledge the yearning that she has repressed for years. Simultaneously meditative and sensual, the heroines struggling with the problem of how to deal with loss, how to keep heart, mind and body connected. Gracefully acted and shot, Incidental Journey explores the varieties of love and consolations of both solitude and companionship.

A proprietor of a video company has racked up many debts due to filming, so he began his bidding life. During this time, he bid on a case which was a continuation of a young artist that he had worked with together before. The artist is full of talent, but he has always been ignored, and his heart is filled with depression. The two intend to expose the enviroment of the artistic world through this shooting so as to relive their sorrows. However, with the production of the film, will the two ease their sorrows, or will they increase them instead?

PRISCILLA'S DREAM is a film about a cat's dream journey. The original film footage comes from the American director Carroll Ballard's 1969 film THE PERILS OF PRISCILLA. In PRISCILLA'S DREAM, real danger turns into an adventure in a dream. In the original film, Priscilla shuttles through the human home environment, and in PRISCILLA'S DREAM, she dreams of breaking away from human society, into the dream, into the state of flight in the dream, and finally out of the dream and into nature, and gaining complete freedom. This film removes the dangerous encounters and restrictions in the original film, changing the situation in which cats cannot escape from the human living environment.

Daylight Developing is a filmed family diary in the form of a personal cinema. This work covers a family history and discusses changes in the light of family in the economic globalization, including the constantly moving family, the absence of family members, the room for women in separated families, as well as representations the concept of home; ultimately what is the meaning of home? In the film, the use of light as a symbol highlights the sanctity of the family and the beginning of life and the use of changes in lighting in the home movie remind of the warm atmosphere in l’espace heureux and therefore leads us to imagine the deepening relationships between the members of this family.

A journey of lost, exile, and going home.

Cinema has closed one after another, yet some still remain its traces. "The First Cinema" in Meinong, which opened in 1969 and closed in 1991, had built collective memories for people in town. These faded traces once nourished someone's dreams where fairies still dance, where laughter and tear reechoes.

Bathing but no murder! Chun-Hui Wu deconstructs Marion Crane's motel room ablutions in Htichcock's classic "Psycho", reframing and reanimating the famous shower scene into a whole other narrative of frustrated suspense with erotic overtones.

An archival student film directed by Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin regarding a young man's complicated relationship with his deceased sister, based off of her serialized short fiction of the same name. Also called The Revelries of Ghosts.

Faced with a looming exhumation of a loved one, a father and son contemplate their mortality. But in land-scarce Singapore, even the dead must make way for the living.

In this documentary by the writer Lin Shuangbu, the passionate and busy sports spirit is expressed in many short cuts. The free entry and exit of time and space is close to the expression style of the stream of consciousness, and he expresses his life background, social movement, literary philosophy and growth background concisely and neatly. Of course, the technique of screen transition and fade-in is also extremely smooth and vivid. There is a sense of reality of video reporting, and the revolutionary character of social movement in pursuit of truth is also hidden in the editing features.

A Lean Soul examines the life and works of Taiwanese novelist Qi Deng Sheng. The filmmakers were able to have in-depth interviews with not only the writer's closest friends and relatives but also the notoriously camera-shy protagonist himself. The film vividly dramatizes many passages from his intensely autobiographical works of fiction. The result is an intimate and candid portrait of one of the most important and controversial Taiwanese writers.

Loh Tsui Kweh Commune is the most influential and controversial punk band in Taiwan's independent music history; from the early 90's till it disbanded in 2019, it combined the restless performing style with its left-wing attitude. The unusual mixture of radical political awareness, staggering showmanship and catchy melodies makes it an extraordinary phenomenon and a great conflict between its social and historical contexts.

The Good Daughter is a portrait of the fraught marriage between a Taiwanese man and his Vietnamese bride. Born out of a disabled man's wish to obey his mother and a woman's effort to help her family escape poverty, the marriage has produced two daughters and a complicated drama. The film takes us inside a household simmering with tensions.

Chien Wei-ssu documents her and her friends' perspective, studying abroad in Ohio State University, being there taiwanese students keen of structuralism, Claude Levi-Strauss and Jean Rouch. She delves into women's relation to men, to women, to their own body, to the menstrual cycle, historical national identity, gender identity and sexuality. In the process, she captures the silence and displacement of living overseas, as well as the intense intimacy between friends. Waiting for a menstrual period that never comes becomes a metaphor of suspension and the freedom of living in another country.

Eighty years ago, Weng Nao, a Taiwanese young man wrote essays and novels, documenting his life in Koenji, Tokyo. He dies on the eve of the Pacific War, and his death remains a mystery. Eighty years later, the directors come to Koenji to look for the forgotten truth.

His mom promised she would watch and cheer for him at his table tennis match if he made it to the school competition. However, he’s not a good player and his old table tennis paddle broke during training. Most importantly, his father disapproves of him playing table tennis…

A young woman in an old town is looking for a place to stay. How does her gaze differ from the goddess's?

Sometimes you are the only one that can really see what’s out there.

Ever since Bo-Yang published his very first book In the Land of The Blind, he has been having trouble writing anything good. He does not believe in himself anymore.

Taiwanese drama film.

CONTRAPELO is the story of a proud Mexican barber who is forced to shave the leader of a drug cartel. As he faces the man who is destroying his country, he is confronted by a difficult.

Across three eras, eerie dreams of a red snake connect the intertwined fates of two families. In 2026, Lian’s play about her grandmother Paochu’s guerrilla tales sparks a political backlash. Seeking Paochu’s hideout with the guide, Yulaw, they find a dead logger. Wrongly suspected, Yulaw is shot dead before Lian’s eyes. In 1989, police informant Xian breaks from his handlers after confessing to Lian’s mother. Framed for robbery, he dies under police torture. In 1952, Kun, an enforcer for Paochu’s guerrillas, executes suspected traitors. A fatal raid kills Kun, while his sister Biyu is raped, later birthing Xian. History repeats itself as love and justice struggle against a legacy of hatred.

A ruined wedding photo sparks a journey through Taiwan’s iconic pre-wedding photographers—uncovering stories of fantasy, rebellion, and pain, and leading to a deeper reflection on femininity, absence, and the unreachable idea of perfection.

Amid a pandemic, Mango leaves the city to join Monkey in a remote mountain refuge. Shot on mobile, this haunting film blends mysticism and reality, revealing nature's beauty, and its harsh, unforgiving truths beyond illusion.

On screen, Master Luo is all charm and flavor, crafting perfect mango ice. Off camera, he's weary and worn. After filming, he rushes to the hospital, gently caring for his ailing mother in silence, fearing to disturb her when she was sleeping soundly on the bed...

Taiwanese lewd film.

Taiwanese film, nominee of 17th Golden Horse Awards

The government's discriminatory policies, wars, profit-seeking politicians, and capitalistic exploitation forced indigenous peoples to leave ...

In 2015, the Museum of Anthropology at National Taiwan University (NTU) held a traditional wedding for an ancestral post collected from the Kaviyangan village of Paiwan. This documentary is based on the archive from the wedding ceremony, combine the image we shoot after two years, to compare the situation of village before and after the ceremony.

A man did obscene things to a bunch of shoes in a gay sauna.

In 2018, Taiwan was kept busy by noises of the election, among which the process of restarting the coal-fired power plant in Shen’ao was the most controversial and eye-catching. I followed the diving and canoeing instructor, recorded the rose coral reef and searched for a rare species of mollusk, the Epimenia babai Salvini–Plawen, in the waters of the local conservation area, and explored the ecological truth of Silence at the bottom of Deep Shen’ao together.

When A-nan looks at his paralyzed father in bed with ants crawling all over his body, it brings back painful childhood memories. Can he restore the long-frozen father-son relationship?

REALIGN is an animated film about the dimensions of space and time. It depicts a boy who wanders confusedly around a room, the streets, and a lake outside a gigantic wall. After a time is corroded away by a thunderstorm, he decides to step toward the while line that bears all gravity.

Lan is born and raised in a happy family. She has been a behaved daughter, but she starts to be late for dinner more often. Out of suspicion, her father asked her and realized that she is dating someone. When Lan brought her date home as her parents look forward to, the person shows up is not exactly who they expect.

Chen Chieh-jen’s Lingchi Echoes calmly yet forcefully condemns the many forms of Western colonial domination Taiwan has endured. Its images feel like dream-images from collective memory, buried in the viewer’s unconscious and demanding a response. Projected across three screens at a slow, poetic pace, the work connects historical violence to contemporary Taiwanese society. Hovering between madness, agony, and ecstatic transcendence, the imagery turns viewing into an unsettling confrontation. Though based on a once-obscure historical document, its reenactment of lingchi in the twenty-first century feels like looking at images of hell. Loaded with colonial, historical, cinematic, punitive, and aesthetic meanings, the slowed image compels the viewer to stare—at history, at violence, and at the self. Lingchi becomes a metaphor for First World power over the vulnerable under globalization.

In the 1990s, Chinese composer and educator Bao Yuankai began composing Western-style symphonic pieces rooted in traditional folk music. One of his acclaimed pieces is Sketches of Taiwan, which Bao was inspired to write after falling in love with Taiwan’s people and culture. Tsui Yung-Hui follows as he retraces his musical journey, decades-long love affair with Taiwanese culture and how he came up with brilliant, groundbreaking work that artfully bridges East and West.

A short animated silent film where about a girl who had a kite.

When an introverted game developer with Asperger's syndrome serendipitously meets an excitable rookie gamer in a new VR game, he gradually realizes she is burdened by a secret that could alter the course of their blossoming relationship.

In the not-so-distant future, a new psychological disorder emerges among humans. Novel Fulminant Depressive Disorder (NFDD), a condition so severe it causes patients to fall into a coma due to overwhelming depression. Counselor LIN Xin-yan, whose best friend is afflicted with NFDD, crosses paths with WU Tian-rui, a brain science and engineering researcher. Combining their expertise, the two strive to piece together the inner world of the afflicted—the Abyssverse—in hopes of helping them break free. Yet, amidst their investigation, a subtle connection begins to form between them. As they went closer to each other, they also draw nearer to uncovering the truth behind the illness. Each of us lives within a sealed universe of our own. And behind that fissure of the collapse, lies either a deeper abyss of despair…? or a different kind of salvation?